Claire Schwartz Selected Works

While the spectacle of state violence fleetingly commands a collective gaze, Civil Service turns to the quotidian where political regimes are diffusely maintained—where empire is the province of not a few bad actors, but of all who occupy and operate the state. In these poems populated by characters named for their occupations and mutable positions of power—the  Accountant, the Intern, the Board Chair—catastrophic events recede as the demands and rewards of daily life take precedence.